Lubin spent the night there. “It was so disgusting and it was dirty,” she said. “There was one toilet and like 20 of us in one cell.” 

“That was so disheartening because he didn’t have to take me to jail,” she added.

Under Florida law, whenever officers stop someone who is driving with a suspended license, they have the discretion to arrest them and book them in jail or issue a criminal traffic citation to appear in court. In some places, they can also issue a civil citation for a diversion program, which allows people to avoid jail and the criminal legal system. 

In recent years, Florida advocates have pushed for law enforcement agencies that patrol the state, whether police departments and sheriffs’ offices, to stop arresting and jailing people over low-level traffic offenses, which they say needlessly entangles people in the criminal justice system and saddles them with more fines and fees they can’t afford. The majority of licenses suspended in Florida are for unpaid court debt. 

Instead, advocates are asking law enforcement leaders to expand their use of civil citations for people who are pulled over for certain nonviolent driving offenses, such as driving with a suspended license, invalid license, or expired license plates. 

In Miami-Dade, where Lubin was arrested, this push has seen some success. County leadership is in the process of adding specific traffic offenses to the list of misdemeanors that are eligible for its civil citation program. But in neighboring Broward County, where Lubin worships, Sheriff Gregory Tony has reversed his county’s policy of listing nonviolent driving offenses in the county’s civil citation program. Broward County, home to Fort Lauderdale, has the largest sheriff’s office in Florida. It is the chief law enforcement agency in charge of patrolling the county. 

“I was fortunate in that I was able to get out and get that arrest taken care of. But not so many people are in that position,” said Lubin, who is a board member of BOLD Justice, a coalition of Broward County faith leaders who work to advance racial and economic justice. “We’re not even asking for something new to be put on the books. The program already exists. It’s just about ensuring law enforcement executes it.”

A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office declined to make Tony available for an interview and told Bolts in an emailed statement, “BSO deputies will continue to follow Florida law and the criteria for Broward County’s Adult Civil Citation program.”

Tony was appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2019 after the Republican governor removed the prior sheriff from office. A Republican at the time of his appointment, Tony soon switched parties to be a Democrat—Republicans struggle to win office in this heavily blue county—and DeSantis recently named Tony as one of his favorite Democratic officials in Florida. Tony is up for re-election this year and faces three challengers in the Aug. 20 Democratic primary.

One challenger, David Howard, told Bolts that he is open to expanding the civil citation program to include specific driving offenses. 

Doing so would have widespread impact. Out of the nearly 1.6 million residents of Broward County with driver’s licenses, more than 61,000 people have a suspended license, according to data from the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles provided to Bolts. It’s unclear how many of those are suspended because of unpaid court debt because the state did not return a request for records in time for publication. In 2019, however, 77 percent of license suspensions in Broward County were for court debt, according to a report that year by the Fines and Fees Justice Center, an organization that works to get rid of bills in the criminal justice system.

“We shouldn’t criminalize those individuals because they cannot afford to pay that fine or that fee,” said Brian Anthony Campbell, a minister who is a member of BOLD Justice. “That’s really what we’re fighting against, the criminalization of poverty.”

Before Broward County adopted a civil citation program in 2018, deputies who suspected someone had committed a low-level, nonviolent offense had to funnel them through the criminal legal system by either arresting them or issuing them a criminal citation. They also had the choice to let them go. The new program gave officers another option: People could avoid a criminal record and the costs that go with it by completing community service, attending educational programming, and paying a program fee.

The county left it to the sheriff’s office to decide which offenses are eligible for the diversion program. 

At first, the sheriff’s office included driving offenses on the list of eligible offenses, according to a 2019 training bulletin reviewed by Bolts that also lists misdemeanors such as battery with minor injury, low-level theft, assault, criminal mischief, disorderly conduct, and possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana. “Misdemeanor criminal traffic offenses (DWLS w/Knowledge, No Valid DL, etc.) will be issued an Adult Civil Citation in lieu of a misdemeanor criminial [sic] traffic citation or physical arrest when feasible,” the bulletin said. 

Since its start in 2019, the sheriff’s office has referred 313 people to the civil citation program, according to data from the Broward County Division of Justice Services obtained by Bolts. Of those referrals, 284 people enrolled in the diversion program and 86 percent of people successfully completed it. 

According to the county data, deputies have never referred someone to the program for a traffic offense.

After realizing that the sheriff’s office wasn’t referring anyone to the civil citation program for driving offenses, BOLD Justice leadership last year pushed for Tony to include these offenses as long as the suspension wasn’t associated with a dangerous offense such as driving under the influence, as first reported by WLRN. Campbell said Tony agreed to the change when he attended the organization’s annual convening in spring 2023. 

“We left that meeting with the understanding that that would be the policy, what we were working on and fighting for,” Campbell told Bolts. 

By January, BOLD Justice obtained data from the sheriff’s office showing people were still being arrested for driving with suspended or invalid licenses. Veda Coleman-Wright, public information director for the Broward sheriff’s office, told Bolts in an email that it’s “rare” for someone to be arrested for only having a suspended license and that they usually have other charges. 

After receiving the data, Campbell reviewed a copy of the sheriff’s office’s operating procedures manual. It showed that in December 2023, rather than including misdemeanor driving offenses in the civil citation program as the 2019 bulletin did, Tony had actually reversed his office’s position and specifically excluded them.

Noel Rose, a pastor in Broward County and member of BOLD Justice, said the sheriff has voiced concerns to another member that DeSantis may remove him from office because of the civil citation program. DeSantis removed Tony’s predecessor, Sheriff Scott Israel, in 2019 because of the way his office handled the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. DeSantis also removed Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren and Orlando State Attorney Monique Worrell from their posts over their reform policies that he opposes.

“That has been one of the reasons that the sheriff shared but we were just disappointed with him…because he made a commitment,” Rose told Bolts.

Howard, one of Tony’s challengers in the primary and a former police chief in Pembroke Park, a town in Broward County, criticized the sheriff for backtracking. In an interview with Bolts, Howard called Tony “a great gaslighter” and said that if he were elected, he has “no issue” with expanding civil citations as long as the office’s legal team signs off on the change. 

Tony’s other two Democratic challengers, Steve Geller and Al Pollock did not respond to requests for comment from Bolts. (The winner of the primary will be favored in the general election against independent candidate Charles Whatley; no Republican has filed to run.)

A spokesperson for State Attorney Harold Pryor, a Democrat whose office is in charge of prosecuting people who are arrested by the sheriff’s office, told Bolts he has encouraged Tony’s office to expand the civil citation program, and will continue to do so.

Broward County prosecutors drop the charges against people who are arrested for having a suspended license as long as they get a valid driver’s license within 30 days of arraignment and the charge isn’t related to an accident, a spokesperson for the office told Bolts. People who don’t have the money to get their license reinstated within that period also have the option to enroll in a driver’s license diversion program that educates them about how to get their license back, in part by requiring them to enter into a payment plan. 

Since 2020, Florida advocates have urged lawmakers to pass legislation that would eliminate driver’s license suspensions for unpaid court debt, but the bills have failed to gain traction. That’s likely because Florida’s courts are funded by fines and fees resulting from criminal and traffic convictions, said Sarah Couture, Florida state director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center.

People who go through Florida’s legal system are billed fines and fees falling under dozens of categories. As of 2018, the average cost of a misdemeanor was $1,000. If someone misses a payment, their license can be suspended, and after 90 days, their court bills are sent to a collections agency, which can add a surcharge of up to 40 percent, further inflating the amount owed.

Roughly three-quarters of drivers license suspensions in Florida are for unpaid court debt and the majority of drivers licenses are suspended for two years, according to the Fines and Fees Justice Center report. 

But the courts view license suspensions as “their only tool to compel people to pay their fines and fees,” so there hasn’t been an appetite to get rid of license suspensions for unpaid court debt, said Couture. 

In the absence of state legislators stopping the practice of suspending licenses for unpaid court debt, several Florida counties have implemented civil citation programs for people with non-dangerous traffic offenses. Advocates in Miami-Dade County, the state’s most populous county, began working to expand their civil citation program in 2021. 

Roughly one-third of licensed drivers in Miami-Dade County had a suspended license, according to a July 2022 report by a task force assigned to study drivers license suspensions in the county. Approximately 63 percent of those licenses were suspended because they failed to pay court debt. The task force also found that a disproportionate number of people with suspended licenses were from low-income areas. There were also racial disparities; six out of ten drivers who received a citation for a suspended license were Black, compared to the county’s population being just 17 percent Black. 

Miami-Dade officials—including the county’s head public defender, state attorney, clerk of the court, and chief judge—approved a plan to make driving related offenses eligible for their civil citation program this year. Those offenses include driving with a suspended license, not having a valid driver’s license, and having a suspended license plate. It excludes suspensions for DUIs and dangerous driving. 

County leaders are expected to give their final approval for the plan by the end of the summer.

“It would mean that thousands less people are being arrested and either ending up in jail or ending up with court fines and fees and also an arrest record,” said Jenneva Clauss, associate organizer for PACT, a sister organization to BOLD Justice. 

Clauss said she was disappointed that Tony in Broward County was not moving forward with the program as well. “It’s very unfortunate,” she said. “This needs to be happening everywhere in Florida because hundreds of thousands of people are impacted.” 

Correction (June 26): An earlier version of this story misstated Pryor’s name.

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Florida’s Aug. 18 primaries were marred once more by the exclusion of hundreds of thousands of voters due to harsh felony disenfranchisement statutes and to the confusion wrought by the state’s 2019 mandate that people with felony convictions pay off their court debt before voting.

Voters in Orlando’s metropolitan region still signaled for the second time in four years that they wanted the state’s Ninth Judicial Circuit to embrace criminal justice reform. 

Monique Worrell, the most progressive candidate in a four-way Democratic primary for state attorney in Orange and Osceola counties, prevailed on Tuesday. She will be heavily favored to win this blue jurisdiction in November against independent candidate Jose Torroella. 

“Our communities cried out for criminal justice reform, and their cries were answered,” Desmond Meade, the executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition who supported Worrell, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night. 

In 2016, Aramis Ayala won the prosecutor’s race with a reform-minded platform, becoming the first Black state attorney in Florida’s history. During her term, Ayala clashed with other public officials who pushed back against her agenda. When Ayala announced a policy of never seeking the death penalty. Republican Governor Rick Scott stripped her of cases eligible for the death penalty. Ayala, who is one in a number of Black women prosecutors nationwide who have faced retaliation for promoting criminal justice reform, pointed to that war of attrition last year to explain her decision to not seek reelection. 

“Ayala has been a nationally visible leading proponent of criminal justice reform, and any time that happens, there are folks that either want to turn back the clock or advance the momentum,” Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, told Samantha Schuyler in The Appeal: Political Report this month. “That is what is on the ballot on the 18th of August.” 

Worrell’s primary win is a vindication for Ayala, who endorsed her. Worrell, who worked as the head of the conviction integrity unit in Ayala’s office, was also backed by other prominent progressives, such as U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

But if she wins in November, Worrell would face a broadly similar political context as Ayala since Republicans still run the state government. The shadow of retaliation was evident during the primary campaign, Schuyler reported. Worrell has not reiterated Ayala’s pledge to never seek the death penalty, and she said she is aware that reform opponents “will use any means necessary.” Other candidates indicated they were likelier to roll back Ayala’s policies.

One of Worrell’s most significant commitments involves youth justice: She said she would not use Florida prosecutors’ unchecked discretion to “direct file” a case involving a minor in adult court, unless there is “loss of life.” As Schuyler wrote, “Florida transfers more children into the adult system than any other state in the country,” most of them for nonviolent offenses.

Worrell also participated in Black Lives Matter protests in Orlando in June. “If you want to change the system, you must change the player,” she said in a speech at a rally. 

As state attorney, Worrell would at least not have to contend with one of Ayala’s chief local adversaries, Osceola County Sheriff Russ Gibson. Gibson, who complained to Scott about Ayala’s death penalty position, lost his re-election bid in a Democratic primary on Tuesday to Marco Lopez. Lopez did not respond to a request for comment.

There were many other elections for prosecutor and sheriff on Tuesday.

A new prosecutor in Broward County

Further south, in Broward County, the prosecutor’s office will most likely undergo reforms after 44 years under the same state attorney who managed it with a punitive outlook. But the county came within two percentage points of veering far further to the left.

Harold Fernandez Pryor, a defense attorney and former prosecutor who ran on qualified reform proposals, won the Democratic primary with 21.2 percent of the vote. Joe Kimok, a Bernie Sanders-endorsed defense lawyer and former prosecutor who ran as the most decarceral candidate, ended up as the runner-up in this eight-way race, with 19.9 percent of the vote. Kimok had pledged to not prosecute cases linked to marijuana, sex work, and poverty, and to end the use of cash bail, as Jerry Iannelli reported in the Political Report last week. The candidate endorsed by the retiring prosecutor, who was least sympathetic to reform, came in third, and the candidate endorsed by the local police union came in fifth.

Pryor is now heavily favored to be the county’s first new state attorney since 1976. In this blue bastion, he will face independent Sheila Alu and Republican Gregg Rossman in November. If he wins, he would be Broward’s first Black state attorney.

Pryor has promised “change from within,” but did not respond to Iannelli’s questions on what exact policies he would implement to make it so. He has said he opposes the use of cash bail for lower-level offenses; he has also said he would advocate for repealing Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. In a questionnaire with the Orlando Sun Sentinel, he mentions “combating racial sentencing disparities in the criminal justice system” as one of his three priorities; asked how he would lower disparities, he mentions changes in office culture, including recruiting “a diverse force of prosecutors,” implicit bias training, and audits, though not changes to charging and sentencing policies. He also tells the Sun Sentinel he will be open to seeking the death penalty.

Miami’s longtime prosecutor secures a new term

Miami-Dade County’s 27-year state attorney, Katherine Fernandez Rundle, defeated reform challenger Melba Pearson by a comfortable margin on Tuesday.

The election drew most attention in recent weeks due to Rundle’s record on law enforcement oversight. She has never charged a police officer for killing someone while on duty; she also took no action in 2012 when four prison guards allegedly placed a man under a 180-degree shower for hours until he died. Rundle, who will face no opponent in November, stressed in her victory speech that she had heard her critics and would re-examine Miami’s system.

Sheriffs ousted in Alachua and Clay counties

In Alachua County (Gainesville), Sheriff Sadie Darnell lost against Clovis Watson Jr., a legislator and former police officer, in a Democratic primary unfolding against the backdrop of COVID-19 outbreaks in the local jail. Watson has indicated some support for policing reforms, including fewer arrests over low-level offenses. The results could be felt in statewide politics: Darnell, who endorsed Republican Rick Scott in the race for U.S. Senate in 2018, is the former president of the state’s sheriffs association. The Gainesville Sun’s editorial board notes that Watson has backed reforms the association has fought, such as reducing mandatory minimums. 

In Clay County, Sheriff Darryl Daniels lost to Michelle Cook in the Republican primary over an abuse of power scandal that led to his arrest last week. Separately, in June, he released a video warning Black Lives Matter protesters that he would “handle” them by making “special deputies” out of the county’s gun owners.

In other closely watched primaries, the incumbent sheriffs prevailed in Broward County, Hillsborough County (Tampa), and Orange County (Orlando).

Voters set up the general election

Of the 19 judicial circuits that are electing prosecutors this year, just 6 will feature multiple candidates in November—and most of those are highly unlikely to be competitive because of how staunchly they lean toward one party or the other. 

Two districts could be competitive. In the 13th (Hillsborough County, Tampa), Democratic incumbent Andrew Warren is allied with reform DAs nationwide. He faces Republican Mike Perotti, who works at the sheriff’s office and criticized Warren for his reform outlook when he launched his bid. “Decriminalization, reduced sanctions, and justice reform cannot overshadow individual accountability and victim advocacy,” he said in a statement declaring his candidacy in February. In the 16th (Monroe County, Key West), Republican incumbent Dennis Ward faces Democrat Donald Barrett, who mentions among the reasons for his run that he is looking for alternatives to “warehousing people in jails.” But his campaign website currently provides no policy commitments. Barrett also used to work as the county’s chief deputy prosecutor under Ward.

The state’s most consequential county-level election this fall may be the sheriff’s race in swing Pinellas County (St. Petersburg). 

Republican incumbent Bob Gualtieri is a nationally prominent sheriff who has championed closer cooperation with ICE and advocated arming teachers in the wake of the Parkland High School mass shooting. On Tuesday, Democrats nominated Eliseo Santana, a former communications maintenance supervisor at the sheriff’s office, who has stressed wanting to counter the “militarization” of police and roll back Gualtieri’s assistance with federal immigration enforcement. He also said in a League of Women Voters’ questionnaire that he “agree[s] with the strategy” of reallocating funding toward social programs. “Crime does not exist in a bubble, and we need a whole-community approach to addressing it,” he writes. 

Florida is voting for all of its elected sheriffs this year, and all but one of its state attorneys.

The post Progressive Candidate Wins Orlando’s Primary for Prosecutor, and Four Other Florida Takeaways appeared first on Bolts.

Broward County, Florida, will elect a new prosecutor for the first time since 1976 in November. And it is all but assured that the winner will be a Democrat. Broward—home to Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, around 2 million people, and the state’s strongest Democratic political machine—virtually always votes blue. But the county has historically been downright hostile to candidates who lean too far left—and friendly to public officials who champion carceral politics.

Joe Kimok, an unabashedly progressive defense lawyer running for state attorney in the Aug. 18 Democratic primary, believes Broward’s typically centrist-Democratic voting bloc is ready to elect a candidate who believes the criminal legal system needs systemic, top-down change. Kimok, who is endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, would stop prosecuting crimes related to sex work, stop charging cases that stem from poverty, and peel back “tough on crime” policies that have been the norm in South Florida for most of the last century.

“I will tell you, when I started campaigning, that was a question that weighed very heavily on me,” Kimok, who is also a former prosecutor, told The Appeal: Political Report this month about the county’s perceived politics. “I assumed I was going to have to go out and educate voters on the problems with the system. But that has not been my experience. On issues, voters seem like they’re there already—or even farther than we are.”

Signaling at least some shift in Broward County’s politics, some of the other seven Democratic candidates also emphasize a desire to change its status quo and bring about some criminal justice reforms, though their platforms are not as far-reaching when it comes to pushing for decarceration.

Perhaps no politician in Broward exemplifies the county’s punitive politics than its chief prosecutor, State Attorney Mike Satz, a stern, 77-year-old, unapologetically tough-on-crime conservative Democrat. Satz is retiring at the end of his term.

Satz was first elected in 1976, when Broward County was still mostly a Southern, white enclave and not an international tourism destination. For nearly five decades, Satz’s tough-on-crime ethos has barely changed. Broward County, for example, has convicted  11 people who were later exonerated —the highest total in the state. (That includes two people who’d been sentenced to death.) Despite the county’s history of wrongful convictions, Satz’s office didn’t create a conviction integrity unit until 2019.

For years, Satz’s loudest critic has been longtime Public Defender Howard Finkelstein, a ponytailed, media-savvy former defense lawyer for drug cartels who turned his life around after getting arrested for crashing his car while carrying cocaine and prescription pills in 1987. Finkelstein has been the county’s top public defender since his election in 2004 and is also retiring this year.

In August 2019, Finkelstein wrote an open letter to Satz accusing him of, among other things, lackadaisically filing death penalty charges, needlessly trying children in adult court, and refusing to discipline Broward sheriff’s department officials who oversaw a countywide crime lab that was caught mishandling DNA evidence and employing at least one person who was investigated for tampering with drug evidence. Satz’s office closed its investigation into that employee without alerting the public.

“We are requesting that you make changes in your office’s procedures to correct institutional failures impacting the fair administration of justice in our community,” the letter stated. (In response, a spokesperson for Satz’s office in 2019 dismissed the criticisms as “recycled old complaints from the Public Defender’s Office that we have responded to in the past” and added that the prosecutor’s and public defender’s offices simply have “differences of opinion regarding public safety.”)

Satz has also been criticized for allowing police brutality to flourish under his watch. During Black Lives Matter marches earlier this year, protesters routinely chanted the name of Howard Bowe, an unarmed man who was killed by Hallandale Beach police officers in 2014. Satz, however, never charged any of the officers involved. Nor did Satz’s office take action after reporting by The Intercept and the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting suggested that Damain Martin, a 16-year-old boy who drowned in a Broward County canal last year, was shot with a Taser by a Sunrise police officer.

—

The race to replace Satz is crowded. Satz himself has endorsed Sarahnell Murphy, a current assistant attorney in his office. Former public defender and ex-Coconut Creek Mayor Joshua Rydell leads the pack in fundraising by a significant margin and has been endorsed by a major local police union, the Broward County Police Benevolent Association. 

All of the candidates have indicated in media interviews and their online platforms that they would be less carceral than Satz, but what that would mean in practice varies widely. The Political Report contacted all eight Democratic candidates, but only Kimok and Justin McCormack provided responses to a set of policy questions. 

McCormack, who says on his website that he wants to “stop the revolving door of mass incarceration” and expand pretrial diversion programs, told the Political Report that he  does “not want to make life even more difficult for poor people by saddling them with unnecessary criminal charges.” He also says he would not seek cash bail for nonviolent offenses. 

McCormack declined to take a stand on legalizing or decriminalizing sex work, but he told the Political Report that “our prosecutorial resources would be better utilized reducing the harms associated with sex work, including trafficking, underage workers, and violence.” 

Murphy, the candidate endorsed by Satz, has highlighted her prosecutorial experience, and has proposed few specific policy changes or reforms outside of boosting funding to diversionary programs already in place at Satz’s office and focusing on diversifying staff. 

Harold Pryor, a former prosecutor and current defense attorney, has scored endorsements from many of South Florida’s Black lawmakers and has promised to “change the system from within.” His website outlines some reform positions, with qualifications, such as ending the use of cash bail “for certain non-violent misdemeanor offenses and other non-violent offenses.” He also says he will “eliminate adjudications for Misdemeanor Traffic Offenses and other offenses that are remnants of poverty,” though he did not respond to the Political Report’s question on exactly how he would handle offenses that are related to poverty.

Rydell, the fundraising leader, promises on his website to tackle “mass incarceration,” but his proposals remain comparatively vague, including promises to “reevaluate who we send to jail and why” and “launch an initiative to start examining the costs and benefits for incarceration terms.” He did not reply to the Political Report’s more specific queries. His website says he would not use cash bail for nonviolent offenses, and he would end incarceration over technical parole violations. 

Kimok, by contrast, has outlined the most detailed platform. He pointed the Political Report toward a 44-page proposal explaining how he would handle everything from misdemeanor justice, to juvenile justice, to police misconduct and immigration-related offenses. 

He says he would decline to prosecute a range of offenses, a strategy used by other prosecutors intent on shrinking the scope of the criminal legal system. He says, for example, that he will not prosecute marijuana possession and behaviors related to consensual sex work. 

Many Florida politicians have used the specter of sex trafficking to crack down on consensual sex work—lawmakers created a “Soliciting for Prostitution Public Database” that was severely criticized by sex worker advocates last year—but Kimok instead told the Political Report he doesn’t “believe criminal justice should be involved in those types of cases at all.”

He also says he will not prosecute cases of loitering, trespassing, and panhandling, which are often associated with poverty and homelessness. His promise not to prosecute panhandling is remarkable in Broward County, since the Democrat-dominated Fort Lauderdale city government regularly makes national headlines for repeated crackdowns on homeless encampments. In 2014, for example, the city banned  feeding homeless people and then arrested a 90-year-old activist for distributing food.

When it comes to drugs other than marijuana, Kimok says he will keep drug possession cases within the criminal legal system, but steer them toward treatment or diversion programs. This is a more cautious approach than some other progressives who have won recent elections. In Austin, Texas, the likely next district attorney has pledged to not prosecute any cases of drug possession or sale under one gram, for instance. 

Kimok says he opposes cash bail, and the use of financial conditions for pretrial release, for any offense—a position that is less qualified than his opponents’. And he promised to never direct-file any minor into adult court. Under Florida’s direct file statute, prosecutors can unilaterally decide to charge youth as adults. Because of this unchecked power, Florida sends more youth through the adult court system than any other state. Kimok has said a grand jury should be involved if a minor is to be charged as an adult. 

In addition to Sanders’s endorsement, Kimok has earned support from some of Florida’s prominent activist organizations, including Dream Defenders, a civil rights organization that has led many of the state’s marches during the George Floyd uprisings.

Kimok told the Political Report that although his platform may seem radical now, he’s hoping to start remaking the criminal legal system so that his children can live in a drastically different world.

“My son is biracial,” he said. “I just was scared to death to wake up 10 years from now, with him being a teenager, and see us kind of still live in this same criminal legal system we have now.”

The other Democratic candidates are James Lewis, who has promised to put the “ass[es]” of heroin and fentanyl sellers “in jail,” Teresa Fanning-Williams, and David Cannady. All are current and former prosecutors. The Democratic nominee will face Republican Gregg Rossman and independent Sheila Alu in November—and will be heavily favored in a county where Donald Trump received less than  a third of the vote in 2016.

Explore our coverage of other elections for prosecutor nationwide.

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